In object-oriented programming, a class is a category that describes a group of more specific items, called objects, that can exist within the class. The typical class is a descriptive tool used in a software application to define a set of attributes, services, or other properties that characterize any object of the class. Each object is an instance of the class. Each object has an attribute value associated with each attribute defined by the class.
For example, one disadvantage of the user interface for conventional software applications that display object-oriented data is that the user interface is not tailored specifically to the data being displayed.
Presently available software applications can monitor statistics related to events and performance of a computer. The statistics are stored in a database and include, for example, processor usage, disk capacity, faults, and diagnostic messages. A user can select specific statistics to monitor in various ways, such as by interfacing with the monitoring application or editing a text file. The monitoring application accesses the database to retrieve data relating to the statistics selected by the user.
Some prior art monitoring applications use multiple classes to represent the statistics to be monitored. With these monitoring applications, however, users have to remember the different names of the classes and the statistics they represent. Other monitoring applications use a single generic class to represent the data. With these monitoring applications, the same user interface displays the data associated with each monitored statistic. For some statistics, this generic display is difficult to understand.
For these reasons, improvements in object-oriented programming are desired for displaying data related to an object in a class.